For a completely decarbinized grid, there are two paths: 1) 100% renewables plus storage, or 2) ~90% renewable plus storage, and 10% nuclear/advanced geothermal.
There's lots of debate about which one would be cheapest. But the true answer depends on how the cost curve of technologies develops over the coming 20 years. (Personally, I think 100% renewables will win because projections of all experts severely overestimate storage and renewables costs, while simultaneously severely underestimating the costs of nuclear. Renewables and storage are always over delivering, while nuclear always under delivers. So I think that trend will continue...)
You won't hear much about this in the popular media though, because they are too afraid of offending conservatives with politically incorrect facts. Sites like Ars Technica cover it though:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22092022/inside-clean-ene...
Well no, storage would need another 100x improvement for being usable in a 100% renewable scenario in any country you have any sort of winter.
Say what you want on nuclear but we have example of countries which managed it successfully, for renewables, we still haven't.
Meanwhile renewables are surging and every relevant expert suggests they'll dominate the future.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/the-world-is-gettin...
The graph without the relatively flat hydro is even more stark.
The stuff people say about nuclear on this forum is on the level of flat earthism and they seem totally unashamed of this.
The easy solution is gas turbines. We already have them and as aviation and maritime shipping decarbonize utilize the same fuel. Whether that is syngas, ammonia or biofuels.
Or earmark the biofuels for grid usage. Today the US produces enough ethanol used as a blend in for gasoline to run the grid without help for 14 days.
As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.
Or perhaps not, sometimes not being an "expert" in the traditional sense can remove the biases of an industry. Sci-fi author Ramez Naam had some of the most accurate forecasts in the past by doing the simplest thing possible: looking at the past curve and extending it. That is probably the simple type of projection I would make!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185166
The IEA and EIA are two very respectable organizations that make comically bad projections, just absolutely awful. I know I could beat their projections!
Jenny Chase is a highly prominent solar analyst that has some great anecdotes about how wrong solar estimates always are, and she challenges that new analysts face, but I'm having trouble finding the podcast right now... in any case always read the Jenny Chase megathreads on the state of solar or her interviews in order to get some really great insights into what's going on.
In any case the rate of learning in solar tech far exceeds the expectations of most "energy" experts, and also usually exceeds the expectations of even the solar experts.
I don't think there's any other form of energy in the country which has a 7 years emergency reserve.
> As we switch to BEVs repurpose that for grid duties while ensuring the inputs also decarbonize.
BEV will make the storage problem worse because they consume more in winter and you can't tell people how to use their own cars.
They have solar farms in Alaska and the Antarctic because it's cheaper than shipping in diesel for 6 months of the year.
And the law of economics making modular renewables cheaper is Wright's Law:
Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.
What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.
Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.
> BEV will make the storage problem worse because they consume more in winter and you can't tell people how to use their own cars.
I don't think you quite get how the grid works? BEVs are like the ultimate consumers for a renewable grid since they can utilize surpluses matching supply and demand.
Everyone I know with a BEV and an hourly contract times their charging to perfection to reduce costs.
They are of course willing to pay a premium to charge now if their schedule demands it, but that is a tiny tiny subset of the household BEV fleet.
That's the opposite, France is exporting in winter and imports in summer whenever the Germany overproduces solar and doesn't know what to do with it.
So for now it's France which helps to stabilize the grid of its neighbors.
There's even price caps against that because France would bleed other countries in winter otherwise.
> don't think you quite get how the grid works? BEVs are like the ultimate consumers for a renewable grid since they can utilize surpluses matching supply and demand.
No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
You need to differentiate beteween exporting when the grid is strained and facing a grid collapse when a cold spell hits.
Click around the weeks and you will find enormous exports happening the week before. Those are the averages you mention. But as we can now both see the French nuclear grid is incredible inflexible when dealing with the demand curve.
> No they can't, you have to understand how the EU consumption works, surplus are in summer and max demand is in winter. Nobody is going to store electricity in summer in their car to use it in winter, this is nonsense.
Please, this is getting ridiculous. I presume you are smarter than thinking that when I put forth people with hourly contracts for their BEVs I am doing it suggesting seasonal storage.
Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?
You know, delay the full charge of the car by a day, two or five if you didn't need to go anywhere and simply worked at home this week.
https://quickonomics.com/terms/wrights-law/
But it's not a law that applies to all technologies, and it will likely end at some point, but there's at least 1-2 decades of cost decrease left.
There is no law of physics that makes renewables work where there are poor renewable resources, except through transmission, which is usually engineered using several of Maxwell's laws.
Any other time it's France which supported it's neighboring grids.
> Have you heard of this thing called wind power? Have you heard of the demand curve not being flat throughout the day?
Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).
The current problem in the EU is the winter load.
Looking at the 2022 numbers nuclear power supplied almost 47-49 GW compared to hovering around 52-54 GW last winter.
It does not change the outlook of France and its neighbors relying on 35 GW of fossil based power to manage nuclear inflexibility.
> Nobody cares about the daily demand curve, it's a solved problem, even my parents had a hourly contract since the 80s (!).
So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?
Please. Come with curiosity instead of digging the hole you are in ever deeper.
This is the reality of the grid, France is a net exporter of electricity in the EU and has been for the longest time. The only outlier is 2022.
You have to understand that the debate in France for a long time in the 2000s was that building capacity was not needed because there's already too much of it (!).
The country also pushed to electric heating to use some of this extra capacity making France one of the highest electric heating share at around 40% (Germany has less than 5%).
> So now when you apparently couldn't backtrack more no one cares about meeting a varying demand?
The varying demand always meant the seasonal demand! You are in europe here and not a tropical country. The problem has always been meeting the winter load.
Here's a few examples:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=FR&...
Let me break it down for you:
Is a cold spell a yearly happening or an instant? It is an instant.
What does French neighbors do? They have large amounts of fossil capacity because they know they can't rely on French exports when a cold spell hits.
They need to both supply their own grid and supply France.
Who cares if France is exporting enormous amounts of electricity all around Europe during early autumn when temperatures are mild and no one cares?
When the grid is strained France relies on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production since the nuclear electricity is so incredible inflexible that it can't be utilized to match a grid load.
What would happen if you had two French grids next to each other both trying to export massive electricity when no one needed it while not being able to supply itself when a cold spell hits?
That's not how it would work. There are far better -- orders of magnitude better -- storage options over timescales of many months.
Large parts of USA, Canada, non Mediterranean Europe and northern half of Asia. A lot of people live there.
>> And the law of economics making modular renewables cheaper is Wright's Law:
I asked which economic law makes ONLY renewables getting cheaper with time. Why couldn't nuclear get cheaper in time?
> Wright's law, also known as the experience curve effect, states that as the cumulative production of a product doubles, the labor time or cost per unit declines by a fixed percentage
We're up to about 8 billion solar panels produced ever, maybe 2 billion or so a year now.
That's a lot of doublings.
There's been about 700 nuclear plants. Not a lot of doublings.
The best research I have seen on why different technologies get their learning rates is from the interviewees of this podcast:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/which-technologies-get-cheaper-over
Some people think that SMRs are a way for nuclear to get on a learning curve, but there's just as many skeptical people as enthusiastic people about that, in my experience.
Natural energy resources are a huge source of geopolitical turmoil since the start of the industrial age. Renewables have the potential to significantly lessen these conflicts compared to what's happened with fossil fuels.
You need a lot of panels to match one nuclear power plant though, and they were/are heavily subsidized.
>> There's been about 700 nuclear plants. Not a lot of doublings.
Obviously, because there was/is a lot pressure against building them. I think China demonstrates, that they can be built rather quickly and cheaper and cheaper, if the obstacles are removed.
It's not really a fair competition when something heavily subsidized and the other thing is almost banned.
>>Renewables have the potential to significantly lessen these conflicts compared to what's happened with fossil fuels.
I'm not too optimistic about it. As usual, on one side you have countries with big renewable sources, the producers and on the other side, you have countries with strong industry, which requires a lot energy, the consumers.
Those countries without the option for local renewables are no worse off for independence than before. The option of renewables only adds independence, it doesn't take it away. Thus our renewable future will be far more stable.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine gives a ton of insight about these dynamics, IMHO. Ukraine's energy system was vulnerable because large thermal generators pose easy targets that can be taken out with minimal tonnage of bombs. Taking out a solar field or wind field is not as easy. And Ukraine's nuclear facilities have been actively used against them during the war by Russia. In particular, Russia has used executions/torture/coercion of nuclear reactor staff and explosions around nuclear reactors to threaten melt downs, etc. Plus, it's barely been covered anywhere, but Russia in this year used drones to damage the new brand new sarcophagus that was supposed to last 100 years, with very few paths to repair:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-protec...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW4BEqDS_wM
And the war has also illustrated the dependence of so many countries on Russia's fossil fuels, enough to kick off inflation across the entire world. Fossil fuels are a global market, so it doesn't matter where the disruption happens, it affects prices the world over. Even though the US is supposedly energy independent when it comes to oil and natural gas, we still suffer the consequences because of that global market.
A power system bulid on local production via renewables does not suffer these massive disruptions from the actions of single nation states. The inflaction Reduction Act was very aptly named, though few people today understand why, it seems. Future generations will curse us for delaying our true energy independence, which is only possible when we get off fossil fuels.
